The UN system’s chief scientist on weather and climate warned Friday that climate change has “a multitude of security impacts” and is increasingly regarded as a national security threat – with global warming records broken in 20 of the last 22 years.

The Maldives’ foreign minister, Abdulla Shahid, told a UN Security Council meeting on “the impacts of climate-related disasters on international peace and security” that there is no bigger security threat than climate change which endangers the Indian Ocean island nation’s very existence.

But the acting U.S. ambassador, Jonathan Cohen, never even mentioned the words “climate change” or “security” in his council speech. And Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia objected strongly to discussing climate change in the Security Council, saying it is not a threat to international peace and security and should only be discussed in specific cases where it is a risk factor.

Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas speaks at a United Nations Security Council meeting, addressing the impacts of climate-related disasters on international peace and security, on Jan. 25, 2019, at the United Nations in New York.

DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

More than 80 of the 193 UN member states spoke at the daylong council meeting and virtually everyone except the United States agreed that climate change was happening.

Russia’s Nebenzia said it should be discussed elsewhere in the UN system by experts, but the U.S.’ Cohen spoke only of “natural disasters” like hurricanes and floods that “frequently lead to breakdowns in social order and spikes in crime, violence and instability.”

Professor Pavel Kabat, chief scientist of the World Meteorological Organization, recalled that the first warnings of the world’s changing climate were issued at its First World Climate Conference in 1979. And he began his speech saying this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos ranked extreme weather, natural disasters, climate change and water crises as the top four existential threats in its new Global Risks Report 2019.

Kabat said the global average greenhouse gas concentrations of carbon dioxide – which causes global warming – continued rising to record levels in 2018-2019.

“The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of carbon dioxide was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3 degrees Celsius warmer and sea level was 10-20 metres higher than now,” Kabat said.

In December, countries agreed on a set of rules to ensure that the target set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) is met. At the talks in Poland, many countries wanted to formally back a more ambitious temperature goal of 1.5 C (2.7 F) which scientists say is safer, but opposition from countries including the United States delayed any change.

Kabat, the first representative of the World Meteorological Organization ever to address the Security Council, said the global average temperature is already nearly 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) above the pre-industrial era and posing threats.

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Rosemary DiCarlo, UN undersecretary-general for political and peace-building affairs, told the council that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report in October predicting more heat waves, heavier rain events, higher sea levels and severe damage to agriculture represents “a security risk for the entire world.”

But she said “their consequences are felt most strongly in regions that are already vulnerable, where climate change and extreme weather compound existing grievances and threats.” As examples, she pointed to the impact of hurricanes on small islands in the Caribbean and tensions between herders and farmers in Africa’s Sahel region fuelled by climate change and competition for land, forage and water.

The Maldives’ Shahid recalled speaking at the Security Council at its first-ever debate on the impact of climate change on peace and security on April 17, 2007.

“I reminded the council on that day that climate change is not only an everyday fact of life for the Maldivians, but an existential threat,” he said. “I reminded the council that a mean sea-level rise of two meters would suffice to virtually submerge the entire Maldives under water. That would indeed be the death of a nation.”

Twelve years later, Shahid said, “I am still repeating the same message” and “prospects for our future are far worse than we ever imagined.”

“While we are still busy trying to decide which form of the United Nations must address which aspect of climate change, our lakes are drying up, depriving fresh water to tens of millions of people. Unseasonal droughts are leaving millions of people homeless. Hunger and displacement are leading to conflicts, and entire nations are sinking under water,” Shahid said.

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